On Chess: U.S. Championships Defeat Scheduling Snafu And Return To St. Louis
By BRIAN JERAULD
The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis has once again received the bid as host to the annual U.S. Chess Championships: The 2015 event, along with the U.S. Women’s Championship, will be a 12-player round robin held March 31 through April 14 in the Central West End. It will mark the seventh consecutive year that St. Louis has hosted the national title event.
Confirmation of the bid came just last week, and not without an immediate dose of drama. Tournament organizers are no strangers to the annual scheduling dance of high-level events, careful steps that must bend around other big name tournaments and often bow to the availability of invited players. This delicate tango only gets more difficult as events grow in duration and prestige, and with so many players competing on differing levels of reputation, sometimes toes get inadvertently stepped on.
Scheduling alarms went off last week when U.S. Championship dates, arriving earlier than previous versions held in mid-May, were seen to be overlapping those of the President’s Cup — otherwise known as the Final Four of collegiate chess. Despite some understanding on how such a conflict stayed hidden on the schedule for so long — the President’s Cup final four teams were not determined until late December, at the Pan-American Intercollegiate Championships — the snafu turned out to be quite a doozy when it hit.
All four teams slated to appear in the 2015 President’s Cup included a national championship-bound player, which meant that five participants were suddenly faced with a choice between scholarships and salaries, and differing definitions of prestige. Grandmaster Ray Robson was invited to the U.S. Championships as the nation’s third-strongest player, not two weeks after confirming Webster University for its third-straight President’s Cup appearance. The same conflict arose with GM Conrad Holt, who led the University of Texas at Dallas back to the final four, despite earning his own seat at the national championship by winning the U.S. Open last August. GM Alex Onischuk, too: Our 39-year-old national champion from 2006, was slated as the fifth seed in 2015 — and is coach of Texas Tech University’s chess program.
On the women’s side, the University of Baltimore-Maryland County’s advancing affected the status of IM Nazi Paikidze, a World U14 and U16 champion who was invited to her first U.S. Women’s Championship after switching federations from Georgia last October. And WGM Anna Sharevich, a local strength who once played for Lindenwood and is now part of the Webster program, found conflict with her invitation as the fourth-rated U.S. woman.
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Rex money wins.